12 minute timer is ridiculous, we don't have timers that long for any other event, I feel like it's an error that we are even having to wait that long! Yesterday I went and vacuumed my house between biting, and finished before my timer was done! This is crazy. The wait list is so long! And even playing for the strain you want could take days to get you infected without being bitten as well.

I agree with too, the biting achievement could use more tiers.

I absolutely agree with this. It’s especially hard with the different time zones. I saw people waiting for bites last night that were still waiting when I popped on this morning before work just to try to get a few more bites in to help people out. This would be such a huge improvement with the shorter timings for strains to mature!

Edit: okay, I double checked this and the person was reinfecting as they didn’t get the strain they wanted. Lots of people use the any strain option and then use the biting boards to request the one they want but with the long bite times that doesn’t work as well.

And, yes, adding tiers to Survival achievements would be awesome!

Full support.

I've been in the biting thread pretty constantly and its exhausting. There was only once that I actually "caught up" and had no one to bite. It lasted all of 5 minutes before the line started to grow again.

I'd be biting right now, except that I'm waiting to be bitten myself and can't start biting again until this current infection starts up.

Yesssss please please pleeeaaase give us faster bite timers, even just 6-8 minute ones is better than getting 12 minutes four times in a row! The whole point of biting is to get people infected faster than Gunner's program - and yet, as others have said above, we have people waiting 2 to 10 hours for bites to infect them - they're better off waiting for Gunner at that point!

I know it's more of a fun community thing, to speed up infections, and isn't as... intrinsic to the holiday as kissing, but goat dammit if that just sucks the fun out of the biting threads and make the whole thing a slog to get through every day. Biting threads have been the highlight of most of my past Survivals, just chatting up between bites, but this year feels like nothing but bite, bite, bite.

Yes please! The shorter progression times are very much appreciated, but it's massively concentrating the waves. Everyone is working very hard to help people get infected, and there has always been a community element to that, but it's been a real challenge keeping up this year and shorter cooldown times would just take the edge of those peaks.

Oh yes please reduce the timers, it is frustrating getting multiple 12 minutes, worse when there is only one biter.

I agree. Only have 1,5 hour in the morning and 2 hours in the evening (European time) and it feels like I can help way less people then other years

As a biter, I completely agree! It was a nightmare yesterday with waiting between bites. Infections are in high demand and with 8-12min wait time, it's impossible to get through users quickly. I always had a wait of 8-10 minutes last night x.x I would love to see a cooldown of 5-6min. As mentioned, the board is swamped this year because of the shorter progression stages, which I really appreciate!

Last night I spent two hours working on someone, and it wasn't even an uncommon strain. There just weren't enough people on to keep the list in check.

I've also been trying to prioritize people who I can tell went for the free option so as to save them some coin when Gunner gets impatient. I know thats part of the risk of going with the free option and I don't necessarily want that part to change, but collecting all the older ones is a hefty cost these days for people who joined the site later. Biting is supposed to help mitigate that, but the wait times are causing mounting issues there.

100% agree. We should be able to supply what is being demanded within a decent time frame. It gives us with more infections available a chance to bite more people, and then they in turn can infect more people.

Setting aside how rough it is on the volunteers (which I completely agree with), it's additionally hard to keep a user engaged for hours on end with 10+ minutes down-time between taps.

'Users helping users' is (I feel) the best part of this Holiday, and it puts a lot of stress on the support community that everything else has been accelerated except the user timers (Kisses included, though not the topic of this thread).

I agree!

I have a timer running constantly when free so I don't waste time between bites. Stayed up late just to try to help. Kept thinking "just one more bite" until 3am.

Edit: Got hit with four back-to-back 12 minute cool downs. Ouch.

Yes please! Everyone's already made some great points in previous posts so I feel like I'd just be repeating what they've said. But 12 minutes of cooldown between bites is pretty brutal, especially since I can only help with biting between work hours this year...it would really make sense to bring the time down a bit, considering how quickly strains are progressing this year (:

yes please!! PLEASE!! big support!

i can't word atm, but i'm sure fellow biters expressed good points!!

just gonna respost this gif

Whoops! You can't bite for 11 minutes 56 seconds!

full support. shortening the wait times on the last day doesn't count, either.

Absolutely support! I've been a biter on NVLB's thread for maybe three years now? This year is by far the most active I've seen it, due to the shortened progression times, and it's been really crazy. Don't get me wrong, I am SO happy to help people get the skins they want - it's my favorite part of the holiday in fact! But I've spent a couple of days doing almost nothing but camping the thread and biting people, because there is a nonstop stream of people coming in to ask for infections, and the wait times are so long that each of them takes at least an hour to get infected. Again, I love this aspect of the holiday, and spending time on the Bite Me Directory with the other NVLB members, but other people - the people coming in asking for bites - don't love waiting several hours for their infections. :(

I've seen people wait several hours - more than one or two - to get infected during the less active forum hours, which I think is a bit much. So, yeah, full support of reducing the cooldowns. 🙏

Yes please!! I also agree with Yumei's suggestion to give us an option for immediate infection with a bribe/hefty fee. I have a wild goal to unlock all of the wardrobe skins so this would be tremendously helpful for folks like me lol.

Agreed!! Everyone has made excellent points... Please shorten the time between bites!

I think this is my third year helping with biting and I love helping out but this year feels more like a chore plus I feel bad that it can take a minimum of an hour to infect someone, it is frustrating all around

I agree we need shorter bite times It makes me feel guilty to take time away from biting others to attempt to get infected myself.

Does anyone know if/when staff will read this? Have people opened tickets?

I've been helping bite for years now (even get strains I don't like but that are in high demand to help out). Oftentimes getting 12min wait times is discouraging... hours biting and not making much progress is frustrating.

Staff has gone out of their way to try and be more mindful of using virus language due to the pandemic this year (which is appreciated). We come to Subeta to take a break from RL... oftentimes hoping to reduce the stress of RL. With such long wait times, it can create more stress for biters & those waiting to be bitten. It would be greatly appreciated if the times could be reduced.